


Rolling Pebbles

by Cloudseer



Series: The Carpenter and the Witch [3]
Category: Final Fantasy XV
Genre: Cor learns to deal, Domestic Fluff, Fairy Tale Elements, Family Feels, Gen, Noctis is a good bean, Nyx learns to human, he's getting better at it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-06
Updated: 2019-09-06
Packaged: 2020-10-11 00:34:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,505
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20537237
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cloudseer/pseuds/Cloudseer
Summary: Noctis plans for his immediate future and Nyx meets with someone from his past.





	Rolling Pebbles

**Author's Note:**

> Cor has had an interesting Summer.

Cor’s birthday being on the tail end of autumn, in Noctis’ opinion, suited the man’s character. There was a calmness about the last weeks before winter came in full. The world was silent and steady, but without the harshness that often set in during winter. The problem, however, was that there was a dearth of options, when it came to gifts. Gathering season was way over. And Nyx had taken over their garden anyways, with amazing results even this late in the year. 

That was why, when tragedy befell one of Cor’s favorite cooking pots Noctis considered it a blessing. There were things, despite Nyx’s belief to the contrary, that Cor was not that good at. Gardening was obviously one of those. Stone carving was another. He knew enough to have been the one to have taught Noctis the basics, and he kept working on it until his skill at it had surpassed Cor’s by leaps and bounds. So his project was to make him a new pot as his birthday gift. 

He had found the  _ perfect _ rock not far from his spot on the river, and recruiting Nyx’s help to carry it and a few others back to his work room in the back of their home had been easy enough. Having him as an assistant was nice as well, even with the many questions the man directed at him every so often. Noctis was not the best teacher, explaining things had never been something he practiced at, but Nyx was very easy to talk to. Admittedly, he was the only person apart from Cor he had to talk to. Them and Prompto, he supposed, if he ever came back after becoming a dragon. 

“Nyx?” He paused in his work for a moment.

“Yeah?”

“Have you ever met a talking fish?”

“Oh, plenty!” Nyx left his examining of one of his far shelves to come back to sit next to him. “Most of them are not very good conversationalists,” he leaned close to whisper in his ear, “ inherited their mother’s disposition, I’m afraid.”

Their moth- 

“Leviathan?”

“Shh, don’t call on her out loud. She doesn’t like that.”

He was starting to understand why Cor found conversations with Nyx too weird sometimes. It was far too easy to forget Nyx hadn’t started out as a person. And then comments here and there made it extremely obvious. Though he supposed it was convenient in this case, since Cor didn’t know about fish at all, much less talking ones. 

“Can they really become dragons?”

“When did you meet a questing carp?” He asked, worrying at his lip as he thought -he had many habits like that, Noct knew some of them drove Cor  _ up a wall _ , like biting his nails-, “it’s not something that happens often, these days.” 

“Questing carps? So it can happen?”

“Mhm. I’ve only ever met one, don’t know if she made it though.”

“How long does it take?”

“Depends on the size of their mountain. Why?”

“Oh. Well... I met Prompto on my birthday, and he said he would come back maybe by the next one.”

“It’s possible, I’ve never heard of one breaking a promise.” 

That was a reassurance. Prompto had been the first friend he had made and he really wanted to see him again. He wondered how big dragons really were, his books were never clear about that. He wondered if Nyx knew, but the man had been very vocal about how everything was so much bigger than he had expected, so really, Noctis didn’t trust his sense of scale.

“Noct!” Cor calling for him made him startle and almost drop the rock he was working on. “Nyx!” Noctis glanced at the small window and saw the sun low in the sky. They really had lost track of time in there. 

“Damn,” he quickly put his work in progress on the table and covered it with a sheet, just so Cor wouldn’t see it and ruin the surprise if he ever peeked inside. “When did it get so late?” 

Nyx just shrugged at him, maybe he should ask Cor to get him a clock for this room? He was due for another trip to the village soon. Noctis recruited Nyx’s help in tidying up the room before leaving. It could get really dark in there after the sun set and he didn’t want to trip over anything. 

He glanced back at his project. It was going to be a while before he finished it if he wanted to do it in secret. But the desire to surprise the man and get one of the rare, unguarded smiles from him was too much of an incentive to give up. And Nyx was already raving at Cor about his workroom and his small carvings, effectively distracting him from asking too many questions about what the small pile of rocks had been for. He would have to remember to do something nice for him later. 

\--

Nyx finds him the next day on his fishing spot. He’s not really doing any fishing, but the sun is out and the breeze is perfect to just lie in the grass and think of glorious nothing for a while. 

“Cor wants to know if there’s anything you want from the town.” He tells him with his usual cheer as he sits besides him. “We’re going tomorrow.” He withdrew a notepad and a pencil from his pocket - Noctis knew those pants, they used to be Cor’s and also didn’t have any pockets. Nyx had just gotten very good at sewing ever since they had taught him and had gone around modifying everything they let him get his hands on with increasing levels of success.- and looked at him expectantly. 

“Uh…” He sat up as he considered. There wasn’t much he needed right at that moment, except… “I need a clock to hang on the work room, and maybe more fishing line? The last one he got me was very good.” He tried not to look at his writing, the squiggly lines always gave him a headache by making his brain think they could be read while looking like nonsense. “Oh! And those candied orange peels, if you can find them. And books. Fiction books, I’ve run out. ” 

“I’ll be sure to tell him.” 

Noctis goes back to laying in the grass as he gets up and dusts himself. “... Do you think there are books on stories like Prompto’s?”

“I don’t know what tales have been written down, but I’ll check for you.” He muses, writing one final thing in his notebook before making it disappear. “I wonder if there are some about my kind as well.” 

“Thanks!”

“Don’t stay out too late, yes? Cor worries, even if he doesn’t say it.”

He grunted in response, resisting the urge to call ‘yes, mom’ at his back. It was nice, that Nyx had taken to treating him almost the same way Cor did. It was, he felt, the closest he had come to having parents -that was a lie, Cor was a father in every way that counted, even if he got really sad every time he slipped up and called him ‘dad’- and he hoped Cor asked Nyx to stay. He wasn’t fooled, he knew he liked him because he did too, and it wasn’t like things were bad before but Nyx brought a sense of cheerfulness that he would greatly miss if the man left. 

\--

_ “You. Are an idiot.” _

Nyx grinned. The path between Noctis’ favorite spot and their home was supposed to be uneventful. Nyx had travelled it many times in the past month and nothing of note ever happened to him. Until, of course, Crowe caught up to him. 

He looked around, finding the crow with the bright eyes in the branches of a tree up ahead. “Crowe!” He rushed towards her, interrupted briefly by a breeze that wrapped around him like a hug. “I missed you, too.”

_ You could have told us, you know. _

“I… sorry, I got distracted.” He said sheepishly, barely flinching when Crowe dropped to perch on his shoulder. She was heavier than she looked.

_ “We noticed.” _

_ We had to find out from Sania that you didn’t show up!  _

Nyx winced as he remembered the excitable swamp spirit. It  _ was _ around this time in the cycle that he visited her and he had completely forgotten about her in his own excitement at the newness of his form. He really owed her an apology but…

“Would you apologize for me, please?”

_ Oh, fine,  _ the wind huffed and Nyx grinned. Libertus may be cranky a lot of the time but he still was his oldest, dearest brother.  _ But you have to tell us what keeps you here.  _

Nyx smiled brightly at them again, “let me introduce you to Cor.” He said as he set out for the cabin, Crowe moving to perch on his head and Libertus making the trees sing as he followed, and wondered if Cor would find his siblings too weird. 


End file.
